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Movie Review | 'Children of the Century'

When Not Making Love, They Dress Fabulously

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: September 13, 2002

Paris: Early 1830's. In her apartment, the novelist George Sand (Juliette Binoche), notorious in the French literary world for smoking cigars, mocking marriage and preferring men's clothes, is dressing for a party. No crossdressing tonight: instead of the habitual jacket and cravat, she selects an off-the-shoulder, full-skirted gown made of satiny bronze-colored taffeta. Suddenly, her new love interest, the hot-headed young poet Alfred de Musset (Benoît Magimel), bursts in and begins to criticize her frock.

Too dowdy. Too drab. Obligingly, she exchanges it for a similarly cut number in deep, rich crimson. Much better. (The actress's exquisite pallor, her slightly crooked moue and emphatic eyebrows are offset beautifully). So much better, in fact, that the pair's long-simmering literary passion reaches a boil. The dinner party will have to wait; the dress will not stay on for long.

This, I take it, is what is meant by "costume drama," a designation that "Children of the Century," a film by Diane Kurys opening today in Manhattan, pursues with dogged literal-mindedness. (The scene with the dress is echoed later, in Venice, but there it is a question of a feathered headdress versus a plain, elegant shawl). And with good reason: the fabulous clothes that Ms. Binoche and Mr. Magimel (an off- as well as on-screen couple) don and doff, rend and soil, are not the usual off-the-rack prop-room goods, but rather original designs by the noted French couturier Christian LaCroix, making his debut as a movie costume designer after many years of working in opera and theater.

Mr. Lacroix's creations look fabulous enough to make you forget about the opium addiction, political ferment and rampant amour fou and wish yourself back to the good old days of the Romantic era, if only for a brief shopping trip. I was especially covetous of Musset's favorite jacket, long-tailed and flattering and the approximate color of a boiled shrimp. I hope Puff Daddy knocks it off soon for his Sean John label.

Ms. Kurys's movie takes its title from "The Confession of a Child of the Century," Musset's lightly veiled fictional account of his stormy affair with Sand. (It was his only novel.) Sand would respond after his death with her own novel "Her and Him," which would provoke fictional retorts from Musset's brother, Paul (portrayed in the film by Olivier Foubert), and from another of the poet's former lovers, Louise Colet.

This is clearly a story that can be told more than once, and, indeed, "Children of the Century" hardly represents the first time that Sand's amorous life has shown up on screen. Merle Oberon played this novelist in "A Song to Remember" (1945). More recently, there was "Impromptu," James Lapine's naughty and spirited 1991 comedy, with Judy Davis and Mandy Patinkin in the roles taken by Ms. Binoche and Mr. Magimel here.

Taken together, that movie and "Children of the Century" reverse Karl Marx's dictum that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Farce, for one thing, is the only way to characterize a movie in which Hugh Grant plays a melancholy Pole (Frédéric Chopin, a lover of Sand not depicted in "Children.") More to the point, Mr. Lapine treated the manners and affectations of the mid-19th-century bohemian crowd with affectionate mockery and used their high-minded bed-hopping as an occasion for sophisticated sexual spoofing.

But as many other French filmmakers would, Ms. Kurys addresses both sex and literature with reverent seriousness, and the two lead actors emote in full earnest. Mr. Magimel, with a wispy orange beard and matching curls, plays Musset with a manic, almost flashy insouciance, as if to drive home the point that the feckless writers of the age of Louis Phillippe were the rock stars of their day (even to the point of trashing hotel rooms).

During a visit home to announce his intention to be with Sand — which horrifies his protective mother (Marie-France Mignal) — Musset bangs on the table, stabs his brother in the hand with a fork, and storms out, a favorite Fragonard under his arm. Later, in Venice, he will give himself over to dissipation, cavorting in gondolas with prostitutes, consuming fistfuls of opium and succumbing, during a fit of brain fever, to raving, jealous dementia.

Sand, the object of both his rage and his inconstant ardor, is harder to read, and Ms. Binoche may be wrong for the part. Ms. Davis's Sand had a nimble, confident swagger in keeping with the character's blithe, theatrical defiance of convention. But Ms. Binoche, almost physiologically incapable of steeliness, seems too soft and vulnerable. Sand was a fierce dissenter from her society's conventions of feminine behavior, but Ms. Binoche makes her, with Musset, patient, maternal and sensible. When, in the midst of Musset's crisis, Sand takes up with a a dull, handsome Venetian doctor (Stefano Dionisi), it seems less an assertion of her independence than a recognition of her helpless dependence on men.

This may be the point: that sexual revolutionaries are fated to fall back into the roles they struggle to overthrow. This is perhaps an odd lesson to draw from the life of George Sand, but it would be more interesting if her intellectual and political milieu were more fully presented.

"Children of the Century," though well dressed and well made, ultimately falls prey to the contradiction that afflicts so many movies about writers. What makes them so fascinating, so representative, cannot really be shown on screen. Yes, Sand and Musset scribble furiously with quill pens, and the opening sequence is a lovely tribute to the craft of printing, but we are never singed by the artistic heat that burned in them along with its sexual twin.

CHILDREN OF THE CENTURY

Directed by Diane Kurys; written (in French, with English subtitles) by Françoise Olivier Rousseau, Murray Head and Ms. Kurys; director of photography, Vilko Filac; edited by Joële Van Effenterre; art director, Maxime Rebière; produced by Ms. Kurys and Alain Sarde; released by Empire Pictures. Running time: 109 minutes. This film is not rated.